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The Craft of Writing > Tropes, Stereotypes, & Clichés

Werewolves? Vampires? Quests? Alpha males? Virginal heroines? Tropes exist for a reason; learn how to use them the right way and when to avoid them.

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The Mary Sue with the Dragon Tattoo

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Posted on 3/16/2011
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Ah, the bane of every agent and editor's existence: the dreaded "Mary Sue" (or Gary Stu, depending upon the gender of the writer).

If you're unfamiliar with the term, a Mary Sue happens when a writer inserts an idealized version of him or herself into a manuscript as a lead character. To an agent or editor, a Mary Sue in a manuscript is always a red flag, something that indicates that the writer needs to spend a lot more time working on his or her craft.

Weirdly, while most genre editors are familiar with the Mary Sue, it seems that a lot of literary or mainstream fiction editors don't seem to know they exist, and thus they don't always get edited out the way they probably should.

Case in point: Stieg Larsson's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels. I only had to read about the first third of Dragon to realize that Mikael Blomkvist was an idealized Mary Sue version of Stieg Larsson himself. I have to wonder: if these books had been edited by an editor more familiar with genre tropes and conventions, would they have been better books?

What say you?

And have you ever been guilty of a Mary Sue yourself?
Showing 1 to 10 of 29 comments
2 years, 2 months, 9 days ago

As a life-long tabletop role-playing gamer, I'm very familiar with the Mary Sue/Gary Stu. Many tabletop games are run with the specific intent of letting players create idealized version of themselves. However, private storytelling for friends and writing for a popular audience are very different things.

I think one of the main tricks for avoiding Mary Sues is making characters that aren't perfect, and have more than a token character flaw. A heroine who is utterly perfect, adorable, and talented, but is a bit clumsy can still be a Sue. A heroine who is adorable and talented but has a foul temper over certain issues and is throughly inept in some notable way can be worthy MC material.

This also speaks to what seems to be a growing trend in literary/commercial fiction, where genre material finds its way into mainstream literature to interesting effect. Writers then can be praised for their originality in the literary community while people in genre literature wonder what the fuss is about. This might be worth its own topic, however.
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2 years, 2 months, 9 days ago

And have you ever been guilty of a Mary Sue yourself?

Sure, throughout most of my teens about all I did was work out my angst in Tolkien-inspired wannabe trilogies scribbled in spiral notebooks. I think I eventually outgrew both, except for a brief flirtation with Legolas when the LOTR movies came out.

Now, it's one thing to tackle a Mary Sue problem with an adult writer who has a novel going through editing. But I think I too often see fantasy writers jumping on the anti-Mary Sue bandwagon without thinking that many of their aspiring writers are probably still in their teens. And the last thing an angsty 15yo needs is to find the character they created to escape their angst being picked on. Then again, there might be some adults who need that escapism. So, I'm careful about destroying someone's Mary Sue dreams.

Unless that manuscript really is ready to hit the big time and be published.
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2 years, 2 months, 8 days ago

Early in junior high, i created a gary stu character inside the Heinlein "world as myth" mythos. Think of Quantum leap, only not replacing people, and leaping into random fictional worlds. It let me use the EXACT same character in any fan fic or personal fantasy I desired. (I plan on using him as cameo a lot. Not actually DOING anything, just window dressing, like stan lee in comic book movies)

That said, there are some pretty decent Mary Sue ish books out there. The Anita blake novels come to mind. A lot of Robert Ludlum's mains seem to be a bit Mary sue as well.
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2 years, 2 months, 7 days ago

Riffing on Michael's comment - I've been a tabletop roleplaying gamer for *mumblemumble* decades. 'nuff said that it's easier measured in decades, I think. Anyhow, I think that hobby can be both a boon and a curse for an aspiring writer.

From the aspect of 'boon', it can really help with characterization, setting, plot (if you're running a game), and even dialogue. Also, as the group you're with matures as players or includes some mature players to begin with, it can actually work out a lot of the Mary Sue tendencies. When I refer to 'mature' roleplayers, I'm not talking about 'R rated' gaming, I'm talking about gamers who have got beyond the idea of playing 'Me, only better' and have moved into trying to play characters different to themselves.

When it comes to the 'curse' part, the two major aspects are oversimplification and stagnation. The 'oversimplification' mainly happens in terms of plotting, where 'plot coupons' become a way of life, and not knowing the difference between a character and a character sheet. I'm actually running an ongoing writing workshop at my high school, and a couple of the students are gamers. It's taken months to get them to the point where they realize that one line (Personality) on their 'character sheet' is what an author *really* needs to know about their character. The 'stagnation' can be worse, though. If a player never gets past the 'me, only better' point, they can become stuck in Mary Sue land.

I personally think portions of the 'mainstream' may be *looking* for Mary Sue characters. They want an escape that they can put themselves in, and an escape an author put themselves in might fit them as well.

OK, as the man says, that sentence ought to be taken out and shot, but I stand behind the idea.

Is putting part of yourself into your characters inherently Mary Sue? If so, I do it. I don't (or try not to) idealize my characters, but in order to really get them on the page, I need to give them some of my headspace to play in. If not, they wind up flat. Thing is, they sometimes wind up with a certain 'me-ness', even if I'm the only one that recognizes it. Of course, there *are* times when they do things I wouldn't, and times when I'm shouting at them to stop being stupid, so I'm supposing they're not *entirely* me, at least.
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2 years, 2 months, 7 days ago

I have to admit, that a few of my close friends who have read a few of my stories think I am the MC in them, or that they are one of the characters.

They are wrong.

While my MC may have the same weaknesses and vulnerabilities that I have, they are so much more interesting than me. Why would I want to write about someone who is boring???

Still, I think every writer uses what they know, what they observe, and to some extent, who they are to form characters. They might go 100% in the opposite direction of their beliefs, or they might include their beliefs as their characters beliefs. Nothing wrong in that so long as they are not preaching those beliefs in the story.

Lately, I have to wonder about the writer copying Twilight. Do they see themselves as the heroine or lead vampire/werewolf?
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2 years, 2 months, 6 days ago

Thothguard -

That is exactly what a Mary Sue is., though - a more interesting version of yourself! It might be worth taking another look at your main characters again.
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2 years, 2 months, 6 days ago

Looking back at my work, I gotta say I don't see any Mary Sue's. I've written a couple of intensely autobiographical characters, but if anything, they were less well off than I. There've been some pretty pivotal moments in my life when I've gotten extraordinary help which I desperately needed at the time. I've been variously haunted by what might have happened to me, if I hadn't been so fortunate. So I write a character that is something like: me without therapy or the crucial insights that preceded it.

@ Colleen (Hi!), I gotta say: I never saw Mikael Blomkvist as a classic Mary Sue, because, from what I've gathered, Mr. Larsson himself was every bit as fascinating. Granted, the character is obviously hugely autobiographical, but aside from him being a solid citizen and very good at his job (qualities I gather he shared with his creator), I don't detect anything too out of the ordinary. Well, there's is the military training (many coolness points there)but that seems par for the course for a modern sleuth-about-town dealing with international conspiracies, y'know? It served the plot.

Now, I've defended Mr. Larsson before, so I know a lot of Americans have big problems with what they see as his idealized sex life, but, in my experience, there simply are a lot of Scandinavian men like that. It's a different culture. And I think Mr. Larsson did a good job of putting Blomkvist's sexual adventures in perspective. Ultimately, the guy's kinda shallow, and the women in his life either accept that or they're quite capable of holding it against him.

And from a narrative/thematic standpoint, in a book originally entitled "Men Who Hate Women," Blomkvist has to stand in for decent men who love and respect women. He's like Harvey Keitel's Sheriff in Thelma and Louise thataway. Not a superman, just a highly competent and decent man, who in the context of all the ugliness around him, takes on the aura of a white knight.

-Kevin
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2 years, 2 months, 4 days ago

Guilty, guilty, guilty! How can all of us not be guilty at some point or another? Especially when people always tell young writers to "write what you know". If we write what we know, we write ourselves.

I've found that a lot of situations that start my ideas come from my own experiences, but I have two people who read for me. One of the questions I always ask is, "Does this sound too much like me?" If they say yes, I ask them to point out a few major places where that happened, and rework them. That's been the best way to beat it out of me. Also, I think "what would Monday do?" and make sure my character does not do that.
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2 years, 2 months, 1 day ago

I tried to have a mary sue character before I knew about the term and that people don't like it. I say tried because in the end the characters developed their own personalities far away from me and the friends they had been modeled after. I just couldn't do it.

Then again, I have a slight aversion to writing about myself. I really don't like it at all. In high school, when told to do a personal essay about myself for sophomore English, I wrote about the education system instead. Still got an A but didn't really follow the assignment. And even during the creative non-fiction class I took in college, I preferred to not write about myself whenever possible, which made that class one I didn't care for in the end.

I will settle for writing about other (imaginary) people. It's better that way.
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2 years, 2 months, 1 day ago

On the flip side, I was in a forum once where the conversation started at "oh, that [book character] is such a Mary Sue, look at this, this, and this" and moved quickly to listing about fifty strong female characters as Mary Sues, with the only qualifier seeming to be "strong female character."

My character Eve Marcori scores highly on every Mary Sue test I've tried, despite her being a very angry, emotionally distant person who nearly gets people she loves killed through her inability to talk to them.

@Kevin--if the character is that much like Stieg Larsson, then it's a self-insert (which is a fandom term that sounds much dirtier than it is. :)
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Showing 1 to 10 of 29 comments
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